A Chromesthesiac Experiences the Everyday Psalm

The heaviness of the throat when a yawn is yearning to escape. Mouth arched - daydream glossy - into an ‘o’ while arms are stretched in reverie, the subtle undulations of a sleepy voice dripping like the rising dawn exhausted in a million hues of bruising indigo and velvet pink, glimmering as the bloodless sun blossoms across the globe.

Something fainter, like the creases of a paper bag during lunch or perhaps a plastic one at the grocery store’s checkout line. Crinkling under the hand’s touch, that molecular connection between the synthetic and natural: like the shades of a fractured geometric glasswork, gray and white, angular, sharp, shattered into a million pieces of tiny silverberries, the color of simple pleasures.

Or smaller, still: the low hum of the television screen at night when a family is gathered by the sofa, moonlight sifting with the electric blue glow of the sitcom’s flickering images. The sloping gradient in a person’s laugh when a funny joke is heard, or the droning sniffle when a favorite character dies: a color unseen, intangible as the emotion transported from screen to person, empathy expressed from human to human, heart to heart, different but all the same.

Perhaps quieter, even: the minor key of a person’s breaths before bed, when reality and dreamscape blur into a smoke-hazed fogginess; that hopeful vision that the fruits of tomorrow are riper, sweeter, juicier than those of today. The soul’s wearied resilience as it trudges on from day to mundane day: Red – orbs of burning insecurity. Green – fields of envy but also pride. Blue – oceans of routine, miles and miles of cyclical places and familiar people. Violet – that guttural feeling in the stomach when aching for something bigger than oneself:

Oh that silver-winged sliver of wanderlust. Oh that golden ray of unexplored passion and bottled up regret. Oh that rainbow flood of liberating sensation, begging to be released!

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